Mayfair Civic supports bar's jukebox permit

The May­fair Civic As­so­ci­ation last week sup­por­ted zon­ing re­quests from a bar, a tire store and pro­posed gym while re­ject­ing a bid by a prop­erty own­er look­ing to leg­al­ize a two-bed­room apart­ment.

The group joined some heavy hit­ters — Fath­er Judge High School, St. Mat­thew CYO and Jack Cos­tello Box­ing Club — in back­ing Casper’s Place, 3510-12 Cottman Ave., which is seek­ing to re­new a per­mit to con­tin­ue us­ing a juke­box. The city De­part­ment of Li­censes and In­spec­tions had cited the bar for un­know­ingly let­ting the per­mit ex­pire.

The as­so­ci­ation ap­proved a re­quest by STS Tire & Auto Cen­ter to erect signs at its loc­a­tion at 6301 Frank­ford Ave. (at Rob­bins Av­en­ue). STS, which re­placed the bank­rupt R&S Strauss in May, presently has just a cloth ban­ner.

Steve Mangin, own­er of Healthy Con­cepts in Hat­boro, won ap­prov­al to open a gym at 7416 Frank­ford Ave. (at Vista Street). The space is a little more than 3,000 square feet. The gym will be open sev­en days a week for any­one age 12 and older. The cost would be $25 per month.

There is hous­ing on the top floor, and the own­er is look­ing to add a res­id­ence on the ground floor. The newly ren­ov­ated space is 621 square feet and would rent for about $850 a month. It was a dent­ist of­fice from 1963 to 2006 be­fore be­com­ing a real es­tate of­fice.

A hand­ful of people sup­por­ted Citro, but an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­ity op­posed new liv­ing space.

In oth­er news from the Sept. 17 meet­ing:

• Mem­bers ob­served a mo­ment of si­lence for Ed Kelly, who died in Au­gust.

Kelly was a former pres­id­ent of the Great­er North­east Phil­adelphia Cham­ber of Com­merce and founder of the Pennypack Park Mu­sic Fest­iv­al. Last year, he was grand mar­shal of the May­fair-Holmes­burg Thanks­giv­ing Parade and lighted the May­fair Busi­ness As­so­ci­ation Christ­mas tree. He’ll be in­duc­ted in­to the North­east Phil­adelphia Hall of Fame on Oct. 21.

• Joe Lynch and Rich Vito, of the County Board of Elec­tions, brought a vot­ing ma­chine for mem­bers to test. They also had ap­plic­a­tions for al­tern­at­ive and ab­sent­ee bal­lots and writ­ten ex­plan­a­tions about the state’s new voter iden­ti­fic­a­tion law.

Lynch, the as­sist­ant ad­min­is­trat­or of the elec­tion board, told mem­bers that Oct. 9 is the dead­line to re­gister to vote in the Nov. 6 elec­tion.

For the first time, voters must present a photo ID card at polling places. Lynch, not­ing that the state will mail in­struc­tions to every house­hold, ex­pects the day to go smoothly, as long as people bring cards with ex­pir­a­tion dates on them.

“It’s not go­ing to be that bad,” he said, adding that voter ID should have been im­ple­men­ted “years ago.”

Any­one who doesn’t have a card can vote with a pro­vi­sion­al bal­lot. The bal­lot will be coun­ted as long as the in­di­vidu­al pro­duces a photo card with­in six days after Elec­tion Day.

Lynch said each of the 1,687 vot­ing di­vi­sions in the city will have 125 pro­vi­sion­al bal­lots. He de­scribed that as “overkill,” but ad­ded that the elec­tion board didn’t want to come up short.

• City Coun­cil­man Bobby Hen­on (D-6th dist.) will hold a grand-open­ing cel­eb­ra­tion for his dis­trict of­fice at 6730 Tor­res­dale Ave. on Tues­day, Oct. 2, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The tele­phone num­ber is 215-683-9220.

The of­fice will be open on Sat­urday, Oct. 20, from 9 to 11:30 a.m., for people to join the Phil­adelphia Re­cyc­ling Re­wards pro­gram. Re­cyc­ling bins will be dis­trib­uted.

• State Rep. Kev­in Boyle (D-172nd dist.) will hold a seni­or fair on Thursday, Oct. 4, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the May­fair Com­munity Cen­ter, at 2990 St. Vin­cent St. The day will in­clude health screen­ings, raffles, a light lunch and in­form­a­tion from loc­al busi­nesses and gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

• The civic group’s cleanup com­mit­tee will beau­ti­fy the area near Re­pub­lic Bank, at Frank­ford and Cottman av­en­ues, on Sat­urday, Oct. 13, at 10 a.m. The Com­munity Life Im­prove­ment Pro­gram will provide clean­ing sup­plies.

Pre­vi­ously, the com­mit­tee cleaned up Frank­ford Av­en­ue and the grounds at May­fair Ele­ment­ary School and May­fair Me­mori­al Play­ground.

Any­one in­ter­ested in par­ti­cip­at­ing can e-mail may­faircleanup@gmail.com or check out the May­fair Clean-UP page on Face­book.

• May­fair Me­mori­al Play­ground, at Row­land Av­en­ue and Vista Street, will cel­eb­rate its one-year an­niversary with a Spook­tacu­lar Birth­day Bash on Sat­urday, Oct. 27, from noon to 2 p.m. The rain date is Oct. 28.

The cost is $2 per child. Kids un­der 10 will be able to dec­or­ate a mini­ature pump­kin and play games. They can also dress in their Hal­loween cos­tumes and go trick-or-treat­ing at tables set up by busi­nesses, or­gan­iz­a­tions and politi­cians. Pro­ceeds will go to signs, fen­cing and equip­ment at the play­ground.

• The May­fair-Holmes­burg Thanks­giv­ing Parade will take place on Sunday, Nov. 18. The rain date is Nov. 25.

The parade route will be south on Frank­ford Av­en­ue from Rhawn Street to Knorr Street.

The theme will be Neigh­bor­hood Unity. The grand mar­shals will be the pres­id­ents of three loc­al civic as­so­ci­ations: Joe De­Fe­lice (May­fair), Mary Be­nussi (Ta­cony) and Rich Frizell (Holmes­burg).

More in­form­a­tion is avail­able by call­ing 215-624-6660 or go­ing to the parade’s Face­book page.

On a re­lated note, the May­fair Busi­ness As­so­ci­ation and May­fair Civic As­so­ci­ation will hold their Christ­mas tree-light­ing ce­re­mony on Dec. 2 at a loc­a­tion to be de­term­ined.

• The civic as­so­ci­ation re­ceived a $4,000 Phil­adelphia Activ­it­ies Fund grant. The group will dir­ect $3,000 to its Fallen Her­oes Run, which raises money for Hero Thrill Show Inc., which gives col­lege schol­ar­ships to the chil­dren of po­lice of­ficers and fire­men killed in the line of duty.

The oth­er $1,000 will be put to­ward the May­fair May Fair, an an­nu­al event that brings live mu­sic and side­walk sales to Frank­ford Av­en­ue.

• May­fair Civic As­so­ci­ation’s next meet­ing will be on Monday, Nov. 19, at 7 p.m., at May­fair Com­munity Cen­ter. ••